The Press Museum

The rich history of the Press is preserved in the Press Archive at Cambridge University Library. A selection of items are also on display at Cambridge University Press, where a Museum was opened on the Shaftesbury Road site in Cambridge in 2011.

Please watch our short film:

The Museum contains original and facsimile copies of items relating to publishing, printing, bibles, prayer books, Press homes in Cambridge, London and around the world and its people.

Highlights include:

a folio edition of the King James Bible, printed in 1638 by University Printers Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel

a selection of John Baskerville's punches (steel rods with a letter carved backwards on the end, which were driven into a plate of softer metal leaving behind an impression of the letter)

the trowel which laid the first stone of the Pitt Building in 1831

a selection of programmes for the Wayzgoose, an entertainment given by the master printer to his workmen each year

Visitors are welcome by appointment; please contact us by email using the details in the 'Extras' menu.